It's not all that vital really. . .I just personally respect it when people are independent-minded enough to "challenge their own." You certainly don't have to if you don't want to.

And if I'm really honest, I suppose I was perhaps hypothesizing about the nature of conservative and liberal thinking--that conservatives are perhaps more likely to stick to the "party line." But of course that may be unfair and inaccurate--if anything Olberman himself has proved that the left is equally adept at shallow bloviating!

Bloviating is one thing, groupthinking is another thing altogether, for which right and left are equally prone to if there is agreement within their group. Beware of consensus, nothing picks out bad ideas or drives new ones than criticism.

Responses to posts always say more about other people, more and more I am coming around to the belief that it is better to be consistently pugilistic than weak or self-pitying in conversation and debate. Stocking up on more information and formulating new arguments should help to that end.

I want to tow the party line for bitter, sarcastic and unprincipled bastards.

Had he done any news broadcasting before? Or was it straight from ESPN to MSNBC?

he left espn in '97 i do believe, in order to become a "serious broadcaster" with MSNBC. that failed... miserably. so he returned to sports with Fox, later switching back to NBC and eventually back to MSNBC. somewhere in that time, yankee second baseman chuck knoblauch over threw first base and nailed olbermann's mom in the face with a ball. hilarity ensued.

the tag team of keith and dan patrick, with some help from craig kilbourn, MADE espn's sportscenter what it is today. they were awesome together, and it was a sad sad day when the duo broke up.

i actually considered going into broadcasting out of high school largely because of dan patrick and keith olbermann (the prospect of spending the first 10+ years of my career jumping around from city to city in shit job after shit job just to get my foot in the door made me rethink that).

now i don't care for olbermann. he's turned into just another ideological blow-hard... the bizzaro bill o'reilly, if you will.

Location: If the moonlight caught you crying on Killiney Bay oh sing your song let your song be sung

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^^ and your point is what Deep?

Yes, they know he is a target. Discussing the issue in an interview directly in response to a question is much different than blatantly posting his picture on a newspaper like that with the headline WHITE FRIGHT and rifle scope on his chest in the middle of KKK country.

But was it, really? Aren't all black men statistically at higher risk of gun violence than white men? Wasn't Michele Obama just being honest?

That said, I still think it's quite a leap to assume that Hillary was implying that Obama was at risk of being assassinated. And she can hardly be blamed for that magazine cover, which I agree, was in very poor taste.

The off-topic tangent of the last two pages kind of reminds me of this thread Dread posted a couple years back. (See, even then people were grumbling about the good old days pre-2004... )

I'm trying to think of what I can say concerning the two departed posters previously alluded to without being inappropriate...from private interactions with them at the time, I agree with Dread that yes, the tenor of FYM was their main motive for leaving. Neither of them ever explicitly cited 'racist/homophobic/misogynistic' labelling to me as a reason why they felt fed up, though, and I got the impression their gripes were much broader-based than that...more a combination of A) wearying of the frequent snideness and condescending tone of certain (liberal) regulars, and B) basically what BonosSaint just mentioned--an increasing collective slide towards lazy dogmatism, responding to attempts to problematize the expected (liberal) talking points on an issue by implicitly or openly attributing dishonorable intentions to the person doing the problematizing. One characteristically focused more on A), the other characteristically more on B), but basically that seemed to be it. I don't think they were entirely blameless themselves of contributing to the FYM 'climate' they complained about, but then that's true of all of us to varying degrees. I would love to be able to say I saw some effective way to address those problems and did it but I can't-- B) is really a function of how hard people are willing to try and how much benefit of the doubt they're prepared to extend one another, and as for A), that has been addressed with said individuals multiple times, they know who they are, but for better and for worse there's a difference between that and actual ban-worthy behavior. If you look at the thread I linked to above, an assertion was made that the forum membership used to collectively self-police that sort of thing more and that that was another casualty of increasing polarization post-2004.

It is true that when you're talking about a social and political discussion forum, the smaller the share of the total group comprised by some particular ideological subset, the more it becomes a problem for the overall caliber of debate if no one in that subset is strongly and consistently motivated to debate constructively and at length. On the other hand, if you're not in the minority, lucky you, because there's almost always at least someone around to do the heavy lifting. I would also point out that the more effort you're putting into it, the more it stings when you get facile putdowns in response.

Have I told you how much I appreciate your moderation of this forum.

The link to my old thread made me laugh. There was a point where Melon was banned from the forum. At the time I was probably behaving like the right wing nut job I tried to be when coming into the forum. Irvine had not been a member of the forum yet, so I took up the Gay rights cause while Melon was gone because I wanted to maintain some balance in the forum.

But was it, really? Aren't all black men statistically at higher risk of gun violence than white men? Wasn't Michele Obama just being honest?

Odds are very slim of Obama being shot at the gas station
getting mobbed for autographs, yes.

regardless, to say it is just an honest answer misses the point

whatever anyone was all upset about with Hillary,
that she potentially eluded that Obama may be at risk of being assassinated, subconsciously or subliminally, in an obscure interview with some unknown newspaper

is much less reckless
than Michelle on 60 minutes saying.. "Oh yeah, anytime, anywhere Obama is available for target practice, just have at it."